Sassy and a Book Sale for Troubled Times

July 30, 2026October 12, 2026 / F.T. McKinstry

Greetings!

I hope everyone is doing all right out there. I’d like to share this vintage 70s gem (yeah, I was alive when this was a thing). The kitten’s name is Sassy. She belonged to a photographer named Victor Baldwin, who made her famous. As the story goes, Sassy was tearing around doing crazy kitten stuff, landed on that bamboo pole, and hung there long enough for Mr. Baldwin to get a picture.

To say times are tough is one of those trite generalizations that doesn’t mean much, not only because times are always tough for someone but also because, right now, most of us are floundering in some soup or another. We make the best of it. Do what we can, while an overall climate of madness, gloom, and despair tries to eclipse all good things.

A few years back, I read some woo woo article about a wave of light sweeping over Earth, raising its vibration and thereby causing general upheaval. I’m a sucker for that stuff. So when 2024 started looking like a tear in the time-space matrix caused by a glitch at the CERN Large Hadron Collider, I took note. 2025 will be bad, some said; and 2026 will be way worse. Yes, of course, it will. Sensationalist clickbait…

Or not. We are so screwed. And here I thought I just watched too many scifi horror movies.

Anyway, this year went all Hold My Beer. It’s straining even my dark, prodigious imagination, both personally and collectively. Every time I try processing some shocking event, something even more messed up rolls in behind it. But you know what? There are good things happening too, if you look for them. I highly recommend the Good News Network. Seriously, check these guys out. This will lead you to other good things, you know, to slay the slow-drip parade to hell that is mainstream media.

Good News Network
Genetically engineered marine microorganisms that break down plastic in the ocean
How beavers are reviving wetlands

For my part, I’ve marked the books in the Chronicles of Ealiron and The Fylking down from $4.99 to $2.99. The boxset editions of these series, The Chronicles of Ealiron Omnibus and The Fylking Omnibus are marked down to $5.99.

Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple and Google Play.

In the meantime, be like Sassy.

Dark Night of the Book Sale

March 9, 2025 / F.T. McKinstry

Greetings. I hope you’re all well, and hanging in there.

It’s been a little while since I’ve written here, though not for lack of love and dedication. I have been busy facing demons, crossing chasms, and oh, I don’t know, losing everything I hold dear, at least for a time. And I’m not alone. It seems almost everyone I know is, or has been, having experiences like this in one way or another. Frodo on Mount Doom kind of stuff.

The Dark Night of the Soul, as it is often called, among other things, is something we all go through at some point or another. One could argue the planet itself is in the midst this presently. Nowadays, the Dark Night is often talked about in terms of vibration, frequency, timeline shifts, etc. But it always involves some kind of upheaval that wipes out everything we thought we were, because birth of any kind involves dissolution. Something has to die, fall apart, return to the earth. You can’t get there from here, or you would be there already.

So those lovely YouTube videos with the beautiful clouds, beams of light, and soft images of contemplative, suffering souls, while some guy in the background drones in an exotic voice about the ten stages of spiritual ascension? Spoiler alert: there are a whole lot more than ten and that death thing will be in there someplace, like a trapdoor spider coming after a cricket. Yeah, you’re the cricket. Don’t feel too bad.

In my own defense, I haven’t spent all this time ignoring my work. Nope, I’m still working, albeit a bit more slowly. But I decided a proper book sale would be nice because, well, things are getting expensive. So how about a good deal on a fantasy series that revolves around a protagonist who’s a trapdoor spider in his own right, a Hunter of the Dark Night, and no stranger to personal cataclysm? Ravens follow him around as they do wolves. He leaves them treats.

The Chronicles of Ealiron

An ancient hierarchy of wizards. Votaries of the old powers. Warlords, fiends and shadows. Enter the world of Ealiron, where a highly paid assassin with the skills of a wizard, voices in his head, and a bent toward bringing things to grim ends discovers there are worse things in the dark than him.

“F.T. McKinstry is a master of this genre.”

From now through March 12, the Chronicles of Ealiron Omnibus will be on sale for $0.99 (usually $7.99) on all the major retailers. This edition includes all four books: The Hunter’s Rede, The Gray Isles, The Winged Hunter, and The Riven God. You can get it here:

Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Apple
Kobo
Google Play

Enjoy, and remember: a caterpillar is a mess of gunk before it becomes a butterfly. True story.

Chronicles of Ealiron Omnibus

February 10, 2019October 7, 2026 / F.T. McKinstry

An ancient hierarchy of wizards. Votaries of the old powers. Warlords, fiends and shadows. Introducing the Omnibus Edition of the Chronicles of Ealiron, where the otherworld is alive, nature is sovereign and balance is kept by the sword.

These tales are driven by an assassin named Lorth of Ostarin, a complex character with a bent towards bringing things to their darkest ends. Following his redoubtable exploits, each book stands alone, happening in the same world with Lorth and some of the other characters appearing throughout.

The Omnibus Edition includes Books 1-4, maps and glossaries.

“The main character Lorth is a masterpiece.” – Customer review, Amazon

1411 pages
Maps of Ealiron

Get it now

Book One: The Hunter’s Rede. A swords-and-sorcery tale of one warrior’s transformation by the forces of war, wizardry, betrayal and love. In this tale, Lorth discovers his destiny when his homeland is occupied by a cruel warlord with no respect for the deeper powers of the world.

Book Two: The Gray Isles. Some fish stories should be taken seriously. Very seriously. In this story, Lorth sets off on a routine mission and is drawn into the cataclysmic fate of an Otherworld being that rules the sea.

Book Three: The Winged Hunter. An immortal hunter, a gardener, and some very naughty wizards. In this story Lorth must use his darker abilities to help two powerful wizards protect a maiden from a diabolical immortal predator bent on fulfilling a curse.

Book Four: The Riven God. His greatest challenge yet, Lorth falls afoul of a backwater monarchy stained by evil, a wayward princess, and a dark order of warlocks wreaking ruin. When the wizards declare war, the northern seas churn with unrest and a war god keeps his secrets.

The individual books in The Chronicles of Ealiron are available on Amazon, B&ampN, Apple, Kobo, and Google Play.